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Glasgow Evening Times to launch third wave of community sites

Posted: 08/04/08 By: Cathy Relf

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The Glasgow Evening Times is to launch a third wave of community sites taking the total number in operation across the city to 36.

A further dozen sites will go live on Monday to augment the 24 ultra-local community websites the newspaper already runs.

The Evening Times took its first step into ultra-local news by launching a dozen sites on March 3.

Twelve more were quickly rolled out after that first wave as the Evening Times pushed ahead with plans to develop up to 80 local area sites covering the major districts of the city.

The paper intends to eventually give control of each site to trained members of the local community.

Members of the public, the police, local councils and health boards are already uploading news, pictures and videos across the sites.

Internal traffic figures claim that a total 14,000 unique users have used the sites since launch.

"The websites have been successful beyond our wildest dreams," Helen Smith, community news editor at the Glasgow Evening Times, told Journalism.co.uk.

"They have opened up a whole new territory to us, and generated so much interest. They give people a platform to tell us everything that is happening. This must have been something that the people of Glasgow really wanted."

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